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jentidders's review against another edition
1.0
Meh, this one wasn't what I expected it to be and wasn't for me. I read it all and left it for a while to review... and now I can't remember anything about it!
simplyb's review against another edition
4.0
The title is bleak, almost makes you want to put it down before you even pick it up. But as a self-proclaimed counter-culturalist, White wants to convey from the get-go that our mechanisms of addressing mounting disagreement in an increasingly fractured and factioned society is not to appeal to people's better sense, or to scream more loudly, or to even risk over-platforming or over-ridiculing anybody. Instead he makes a case that we should devote ourselves to a counter-culture movement that is creative and that is alternative. That while we do exist in a system we all know is messed up and broken, that we should do our best to provide alternatives as a means of swaying opinion, or at the minimum not actively (or even passively) buy into the system hook, line, and sinker. Far from a field guide of how to do that, he makes a lot of astute points and observations of how art and lifestyle in counter-culture has become too appropriated, and how our inherent greediness for comfort and homeostasis-plus-one has made us blind to what should rightfully outrage us as humans. I think the one of the main reasons I didn't rate this higher, and this was mentioned on other reviews, is a section where he outlines types of stupidity that rein supreme (sacrificial stupid, transcendant stupid, the conveniently and inconveniently stupid). It's tongue in cheek, and nobody escapes the stupid moniker, but in an otherwise fairly even-handed and incising but otherwise non-judgmental approach to a heavy topic, this was jarringly disparaging. Short of that I think it's a good read to stimulate thinking, I'd recommend
bibliocyclist's review
3.0
Flannery O’Connor’s character Misfit proclaims, “She would have been a good woman if there had been someone there to shoot her every minute of her life.” White applies this characterization to the “inconveniently stupid” among us today. Read the short stories and the social criticism, and draw parallels of your own.
***
“In capitalist culture life does not live.” —TA
What humans aspire to is the pleasure of homeostasis.
Consider this dystopian vision. We get the Guaranteed Minimum Income we’re all supposed to want, and the economy then looks like this: the oligarchs take the profits through prodigious monopoly rents; robots do most of the work; the world is awash with cheap consumer goods; and we superseded humans have the privilege of paying for those goods with free money.
How do I remain rich even after the end of money and a habitable planet?
“One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.” —MA
“Delusion will last until it is about to become fatal, at which point an onset of sanity is certain.” —JKG
***
“In capitalist culture life does not live.” —TA
What humans aspire to is the pleasure of homeostasis.
Consider this dystopian vision. We get the Guaranteed Minimum Income we’re all supposed to want, and the economy then looks like this: the oligarchs take the profits through prodigious monopoly rents; robots do most of the work; the world is awash with cheap consumer goods; and we superseded humans have the privilege of paying for those goods with free money.
How do I remain rich even after the end of money and a habitable planet?
“One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.” —MA
“Delusion will last until it is about to become fatal, at which point an onset of sanity is certain.” —JKG
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